“Don’t make it so easy on yourself.”

His eyebrows raised. “You think that’s easy.”

“Easy, and not the point.”

“You’re hurt then,” he said gently.

“Don’t be sentimental. There’s a black man in jail who maybe shouldn’t be. I’ve taken on Cade and Rayfield and Mooring, been beaten up by Jason, put my marriage in jeopardy and now Kris Ann, and you’ve been content to let me do that, not knowing the truth. I’ll get that now if I have to shake it out of you.”

He raised a hand to stop me. “Adam, please—”

“Hurt is a trivial word, Henry. I want to know what you’re really after. Your marriage was a fraud and you don’t give a damn about Jason. I’m a cat’s paw you’ve played against Roland.”

“Has that been too hard for you?”

There was sudden steel in his voice. Softly, I answered, “Not too hard.”

“I hope not.” He spoke without apology. “Because I couldn’t tell you.”

“Just Roland.”

“There were reasons for that.” I shrugged my indifference. “Please,” he urged. “Hear me out. I’ll explain as much as I can.”

I sat back to light a second cigarette, watching him. His chest looked small, his breathing shallow and rapid. In pale light the skin of his face—too slack beneath the eyes, drawn tight across his cheeks—made him look like a dying man. He stared fixedly away. “That boy I was with wasn’t the beginning, Adam. I’d had those feelings—wanting to touch and be touched—long before, from when I was young. They made me sick. I tried believing I wasn’t like that. My father, Roland—they were the men they wished to be. There was no one I could tell.”

I rubbed my forehead to fight the ache inside, and for a moment Henry was Eddie Halloran, smiling, listening, telling no one, winding up dead. “I married Lydia hoping to be different,” he went on. “There was someone else, I knew, but we had things in common, and I thought somehow …” His voice flattened out. “The wedding night was a disaster. I was what I had feared. Afterwards she lay awake in her pink nightgown. I could hear her breathing. Finally I couldn’t stand it. I told her about the feelings. It was as though she went into shock. She began shaking her head, saying, ‘Oh, God, no,’ over and over and asking why, why had I married her. Then she broke down. When I closed the door behind me she was still sobbing.